Menu

The Rajeev Batra Report Card (Opinion)

Interim City Manager Rajeev Batra will preside over his last meeting tonight when the Stadium Authority meets. This will be the end of his Santa Clara tenure where he served for 13 years as Public Works Director before being appointed Interim City Manager in April, 2016.

Many sources said his style led to poor morale among city staff who felt there was no strong and trustworthy leadership coming from the city manager’s office.

Knowledge and Competency

Grade: C-

Batra knew public works, but didn’t know much about all the other city departments. “He never put in the effort or time to learn,” was a common comment. Batra was also out of the office a lot, frequently on Fridays. We noticed at council meetings that Batra embarrassed himself by not knowing basic things like the Stadium Authority is not in the City Charter.

He was unprepared in staff meetings and subcommittee meetings, too, our sources said.

When Batra became city manager, he said that he wanted to connect with the community directly. To his credit, he had a handful of evening meetings with Santa Clara residents. But the people who attended said the meetings were brief (sometimes an hour or less) and uninformative. He never effectively used social media either, a real lost opportunity.

Openness and Transparency

Grade: D

This is a big deal to anyone who covers City Hall and to residents, too. There’s been a lot of progress since the change from Mayor Jamie Matthews to Mayor Lisa Gillmor when it comes to transparency. But Batra seemed to resist it. A lot of times he looked like he was working for the 49ers and not Santa Clara.

Batra was a nice guy who was unfortunately not suited for the job. This led to some bad decisions and poor morale at City Hall during the last 17 months. Sources say he is being unhelpful with the transition, even though that’s the reason he was kept on these last few months.

We hope the next city manager, Deanna Santana, will be a strong and trusted leader who believes in openness and transparency. That would be good for morale and Santa Clara residents.

For the money all of the senior staff make and how corrupted, incompetent and lazy they are… it’s ridiculous.
There is not one of them that is both competent and battles for the residents and small businesses of Santa Clara.

As a short termer, Rajeev could have cleaned house but figured he wouldn’t since he’s been part of the problem.

The new City Manager looks to be more of the same.

Some Sunnyvale employees are glad to see her go next door and become someone else’s problem.
When do you start giving her and her new incredibly overpaid staff report cards?

If they produce results and if 5-8 people in Santa Clara senior city staff are fired for the incompetence and their ethical violations, then I’d give her an “A” to start with…. with other actions to be graded later.

People are surprised with his performance as “Interim City Manager”? Really? He did a terrible joke b as Director of Public Works too. His higher-appointment was a great example of promoting someone to their highest level of incompetency.

Thrilled to see him go … and oh, so hopeful that the next City Manager will finally clean out the cronies, good ‘old boys & girls, and the incompetence that plagues City Hall. She’s gonna have to so something serious about it — She has a whole lot of money to find to pay for her own salary package and those of all her new hand-picked executive staff too. Hope she’s bringing a huge broom and an even bigger dumpster to clean out the trash and eliminate all the waste and dead wood associated with 1500 Warburton.